Streets is Listing

'Tis the season for yearend lists. I don’t normally do these. But during a moment of day-to-day tedium last week, it occurred to me that there is a ton of stories that accumulate over the course of a year. And while this year, compared to previous years, I’ve been slightly better at getting those stories told via this page (100+ posts in 2011!), the sheer volume of drunken shenanigans practically begs for reflection in the waning days of December.

But the prioritization involved in a “Yearend/Top 25/etc.” list is an especially foolhardy pursuit when you’re dealing with experiences. It’s easy to separate the bad from the good, but how do you deem Good Experience A empirically better than Good Experience B? You may end up with a few really high highs and a few really low lows, but the overwhelming majority of items are going to populate a middle realm where no one event is substantially better or worse than the next. And let’s not forget just how arrogant it is to assign rank to items in a published write. I am one person, and this post will be read by millions hundreds tens of fans; although I may list one event as being better than another, what makes me think that each of those ten readers will agree with the ordering?

This list, therefore, is as random as the life it is fueled by—the items are, however, in chronological order. But no numerical value has been assigned to these moments, so that they may stand as equally brilliant moments of boozy fun I’ve had in 2011. Some of them have already appeared in On the Rocks posts this year, and therefore I didn’t go into too much detail about them here (for the most part). If you want to read more about those specific tales, a link to the corresponding post is provided. For those happenings that are being published for the first time, though, I’ve given a few choice comments.

Here’s to 2012 being a great one.

Top 15 Drunken Moments of 2011

• The Buffalo Trip. Hurley and I drove up to Buffalo, NY—the homeland of GTB [obviously, he’s no longer a “groom to be”, as his wedding took place 2½ years ago; but I’m too lazy to create a new alias] and his crew of boozing all-stars—to join T.C., who was already in town for a business trip, on the second Friday of February. We pregamed at GTB’s house with a few card games, and then headed off to run the town. We bounced from bar to bar to bar, but the only thing I remember clearly is falling in the snow in GTB’s front yard when we got home. The next morning the Pittsburgh boys, all of us enduring massive hangovers, climbed back into our vehicles and crawled back home.
  
• The Pirates’ Home Opener. How do you make a baseball game tolerable to watch? Spend all day getting really, really drunk (and, also, don’t watch much of the game itself). Although we were without our patron saint of home openers, Chief, we boozed at a level that would have made him proud. Beard passed around a handle of Jim Beam until it was completely gone (tradition is tradition); I made out with a shy buxom lass named Kim in the Hall of Fame Club, where we had just met minutes earlier; Baby Joey got kicked out of the same HOF Club for pissing in a bathroom sink; and Dupa molested a female coworker on the McFaddens dance floor. It’s a grand ol’ game.
  
• Four Loko Night. One Saturday in April, Dupa and I decided to go Loko with the case that TJ had bought me for my birthday. As it happened, our buddy Weiner (yes, that’s his real name) was in town with his girlfriend, and they joined the fun. Before long, my apartment was filled with more than ten people, most of us holding 24 oz cans of happiness. Particularly fun to watch was TD, who was consuming her first ever Loko (we only let her have a half a can, being that she was a virgin—and because the can is the same size as her). We later spilled out into the night and hit up Shady Grove. I even performed a lap dance for one of our friends' girlfriends (hey, it was her birthday, and I owed her—she gave me one on my birthday).
  
• Brewski Fest. Beer. Lots of beer. Add in a surprise attendance by BlahBlahBlah, and Tony deciding to leave at 5 am, only to head out the door to the deck and stand there in confusion, and you have something special. And Dupa and I had an idea for a new contest at the annual event: This year, many breweries had stacks of stickers at their booths as part of the swag offered to the Brewskiers. Dupa and I, then, began collecting stickers, applying them all over our bodies. We looked like drunken stockcars. Dupa eventually won by slapping a Full Pint Brewing sticker on his forehead. Now that’s commitment.
  
• The Jim Jefferies Show. When Jefferies announced that he would be coming to Pittsburgh for a weekend of performances in May, my crew quickly made plans to be there. The Aussie comic is one of our favorites, and each of us can recite “I Swear to God” by heart. Hurley and I got boozed up during dinner at Rock Bottom, and then met up with Dupa, Shannon, Stef, and Entertainer at the Improv, where we proceeded to get even boozier during the raucous show. Afterwards we all headed back to Rock Bottom for more drinking, and were eventually joined by others—including Jim Jefferies himself. Best line of the night: Jefferies telling Enzie he wanted to fuck her, kill her, and toss her body in the river.
  
• Redbeard’s Happy Hour Night (post). I've already spoken on how great the random Friday night in June was. Proof that, in life, it’s often the unplanned moments that turn out the best.
  
• Furry Safari (post). Friends, fun, and fur. Plus lots and lots of booze. And an uninvited guest. And then lots and lots more booze.
  
• Armo’s Pool Party (post). Easily the best party of the summer. An entire day and night spent in perfect July weather with beer, lemonade vodka (to TJ’s detriment), bikinis, and craziness.
  
• Xmas in July (post). Hallelujah.
  
• The Admiral’s 75th (post). Say what you will about my family, but we know how to throw one hell of a party. Big Sis tearing down the house at the afterparty, Step Bro hitting on everything in a skirt without a care, the Sunday barbecue carrying on into the wee hours of the night, and a Mason jar of moonshine making the rounds. Yessir.
  
• Esq’s Bachelor Party. In September we gathered for our homie’s last hurrah. Beer pong, scotch, and hookup horror stories at Breitling’s estate, a bus ride to Station Square, and copious amounts of boozing. When walking into Buckhead, I managed to smack my head off a low hung light, causing me to crumple to the ground, and making several cute girls nearby shriek, “Oh my god, are you alright?!”
  
• Dupa’s Dirty Thirty in Vegas (post). Yup. [And yes, the third installment is going to be published…eventually.]
  
• Halloween. Enzie, Chappy, his fiancée, and I helped TJ and Glitter take their son (as well as his friend, who was escorted by his mom—Glitter’s friend Jenn) around Chappy’s neighborhood. And along the way Chappy and I worked on the case of Sam Adams Oktoberfest that was in TJ’s backpack. As the night went on, we had to dig through the candy his son had been collecting to get to the bottles; in other words, we had to find our way through the treats to find the trick.
  
• Whisky Fest. Thanks to TD and her sister Green Pants, I finally got to take part in this coveted November affair. Heinz Field’s exhibition hall was filled with every premium spirit one could ever hope to sample, from Johnnie Walker Blue Label (which was tasted-dry by attendees within two minutes of each bottle being opened) to Courvoisier Rose. Boy Toy and I spent three finely-attired hours working our way around to every table that we could, while growing more and more functionally dysfunctional.
  
• The Ugly Sweater Party (post). The first time I’ve ever enjoyed helping friends move furniture.
  

Deck the Halls

I don’t know when the “Ugly Christmas Sweater” party became the mandatory holiday tradition that now permeates December’s existence within the borders of Christianity’s conquered empire.

*pauses* I’ve been reading some of Christopher Hitchens’ (R.I.P.) work today; if the first sentence feels too highbrow for this page, please bear with me. I’m sure it’ll wear off as this goes along.

But back to the sweater party. The idea was certainly novel when I first learned of it a few years ago. I was at Shadyside Saloon on a random Saturday night when a large group of sloshed people walked in wearing their grandmothers’ finest holiday threads. I asked one of the girls in the group what was going on, and the tipsy lass explained the party and its premise. By the following year, everyone I knew was either going to an ugly sweater party, or was posting pictures on Facebook of the one they had just been to. Maybe I just discovered the phenomenon late; but it seemed to go from being a random, one-of-a-kind occurrence to a holiday cliché in less time than it takes Kim Kardashian to dive in front of a flashing camera.

But, despite this sudden growth in popularity, I had yet to attend an ugly sweater party. It remained just below “Foam Party” and just above “Garden Party” on this drinker’s specialty-party bucket list. That all changed two weeks ago; thanks to Dupa and Smashley, I can now cross it off the list. [Next up: “Key Party”…]

The challenge that immediately faces you once you’ve been invited to an ugly Christmas sweater party is, of course, finding an ugly Christmas sweater. My family loves me too much to have ever given me one, which meant I would have to buy one. But where do you go to find an ugly Christmas sweater? Personally, I always assumed they just came into being, like candy corn and old Chevy Cavaliers. No one buys these things; they just sort of…show up.

I was saved, as usual, by the internet. I happened to see the perfect holiday “sweater” [I use apostrophes because, as it was pointed out to me by several people, the item of clothing in question was more sweatshirt than sweater.] while reading a random FHM.com newsletter. Across the chest was a festive winter display that included snowflakes, Christmas trees, and reindeer having sex. I hummed “Jingle Bells” as I placed my order.

Smashley’s townhouse was perfectly appointed for the party, with food, people, and booze everywhere you turned. I arrived roughly two hours after the party had begun, and found our hosts to be sailing blissfully down Shit Creek by that point. Smashley, in particular, was wobbly; her eyes were glossed over, and Dupa noted to me that she had exceeded her seven beer threshold. He was standing a little more firm than she was, but that’s like saying ice is slightly colder than snow on an August afternoon. As he stalked the party wearing a knitted Christmas vest and dangling Christmas elf earrings, everyone at the party knew that his time was limited.

With card games starting and the party buzzing along, Tony and I decided to make a run to the bar down the street for six packs. We grabbed Miller Lite pounders from the hot-but-really-young-looking bartender to fortify the party supply. Tony then added, “I’ve got to get something good for myself, I can’t drink that stuff,” and ordered a sixer of Sam Adams. This is the same guy who I once watched put Coke in a glass of good scotch. I feel like I don’t know him anymore.

The next couple of hours went by in somewhat predictable fashion: TJ took a picture of Dupa suggestively shoving a beer bottle into Smashley’s mouth, rounds of shots were passed out by TD, Smashley performed a standing lap dance on a too-embarrassed-to-dance-back Tony, TJ cut the green-sequined sleeves off of our friend Dave’s sweater, people took turns wearing said green-sequined sleeves, rounds of shots were passed out by Tony, Dupa pulled out his balls in front of unsuspecting party guests…you know, the standard fare. Then, just before 1 a.m., Smashley went upstairs and didn’t come back. After about ten minutes, Dupa went upstairs too, presumably to check on her. Another ten minutes passed without his return, and the twelve of us still hanging out suddenly felt abandoned. I walked upstairs and listened at the bedroom door; I heard utter silence. Nothing. It was still relatively early, but our hosts had both inexplicably turned in for the night, without so much as a “Goodnight” or “Fuck you, I’m out!”

When I rejoined my fellow orphaned partygoers, we began strategizing our next move. TD and TJ had recently rented a house only five minutes away, and they offered to continue the party over there. As everyone began gathering coats and other belongings, a thought was casually voiced by someone in the crowd: “I can’t believe they just passed out on us like that. We should do something to fuck with them.” This stopped several of us in our tracks, as we considered the possibilities. And that pause gave the opportunity for a suggestion to be made. “We should move around all of the furniture.”

Now, dear reader, it may seem that I’m purposely being vague about the authors of these two sentences. But I say with all honesty that I have no idea who was responsible for either. I was one of the more sober people at the party at that point, but I truly do not remember just who said what; what I do remember, however, was that each of us grinned from ear-to-ear once the idea was in our heads. And not a single person raised protest; Affliction, TJ, Tony, Dave, Dave’s wife Melissa, TD, her “friend” “Boy Toy”, Shannon, Entertainer, Prince of Ligonier, Mrs. Prince, and I just chuckled and got down to it.


Our original thought was to go all out—TV in the kitchen, dining room table on the back porch, etc. But logical heads prevailed, and we settled for only shifting around

the living room. The entertainment center was moved from the wall, it’s TV, cable box, and DVD player carefully disconnected from the outlets and cable line. In its place went the couch, which had occupied the opposite wall. The chaise lounge and accompanying ottoman were moved to the far corner, and the coffee table was placed in front of the couch. The room was essentially flipped. Giggling like schoolchildren, we gathered up the sixers that Tony and I had bought, and tiptoed off to our cars.

As we piled into TD and TJ’s living room and started cracking open beers, a common sentiment was repeatedly shared by each of us—ironically, the very people to blame for the sudden lack of trust. “I am NEVER leaving any of you assholes alone at my place.”